Notes by Jayādvaita Swami

In 1964, when I was a cynical fourteen-year-old living in New Jersey, I visited the New York World’s Fair. There, more than a square mile of marsh and dumping grounds had been converted into a colorful fairgrounds, where corporations like IBM, Coca-Cola, General Motors, and General Electric had erected futuristic pavilions to a vision of scientific progress and a better, more comfortable life.

At General Electric’s Progressland, the Disney-designed “Carousel of Progress” showed us how, through the decades, life for us was getting better and better and better, thanks to ever newer household machines that saved us work and made our life so much easier and more rewarding.